AVG Launches New and Improved CloudCare for SMB Resellers

— January 07, 2013

AVG Technologies (www.avg.com/cloudcare), the provider of Internet and mobile security to 143 million active users, demonstrated substantial momentum for its AVG CloudCare small business IT management platform by announcing it has signed more than 1000 partners. The news comes as the latest version, AVG CloudCare 2.1, is unveiled at Pepcom, a press event at the 2013 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Since its launch in October 2012, AVG CloudCare has amassed more than 1,000 reseller partners and is already managing tens of thousands of small business endpoints across the UK and North America. In a November 2012 survey of its resellers, 80% of AVG partners indicated they already perceived increased efficiency with AVG CloudCare.

“Our success to date has been driven by a close collaboration between our development team and partner base to bring the right product to market at the right time for our customers,” said Mike Foreman, General Manager, for AVG SMB. “Because our leadership team comes from SMB and channel roots, we understand the challenges and needs facing small businesses and the channel. We continue to gather their input to refine and advance the product. Today’s release delivers a number of enhancements and refinements that will make it even easier for our partners to add value to their small business customers via the cloud.”

AVG CloudCare provides small business resellers and MSPs with a free-of-charge, easy-to-use cloud-based administrative platform. The tools within AVG CloudCare allow them to remotely deploy and manage AVG’s award-winning antivirus and content filtering via a single console at prices small businesses can easily afford. Also key to AVG CloudCare is AVG Remote IT. Available currently in Beta, AVG Remote IT is another free tool that lets resellers remotely access and trouble-shoot issues on their customers’ devices from anywhere.

Higher Protection
AVG CloudCare 2.1 release has been upgraded with the very latest AVG 2013 antivirus technology and features to keep your customers protected. Now the need for complicated and time consuming removal of any pre-defined competitor antivirus products has been eliminated. Competitive antivirus products can be completely removed by simply selecting all three deployment methods, including direct install.

Better Control
Content filtering schedules can be set to only allow access to websites outside of office hours and new activity reports show what users are doing online or trying to access in historical data. The customer dashboard can be personalized so you can specify the most important information displayed in real time that you need to be able to access quickly and clearly. There are new, additional alerts so you can push updates or resolve issues even before the customer is aware of them.

More flexibility
Offer each customer a more personalized and appropriate service with a greater range of options when it comes to component installation. You can tailor each antivirus installation according to specific customer requirements quickly and easily just by checking the components they need. With an enhanced subscription option of 24 months, you now have a more flexible range of three payment options to offer customers: monthly, yearly or 24-month (two-year) payments.

Less hassle
Access every device’s virus vault without having to log into individual PCs so you can delete or restore files with a single click. Choose one of three simple, improved deployment options – an email invitation, a redistributable package or remote deployment – that can be customizable to suit your needs. Update individual devices and upgrade services across a customer network automatically which minimizes the impact on customer network bandwidth.

Improved AVG Content Filtering scheduling
Flexible controls allow employees to access websites that you want them to see in time intervals.

Improved AVG Content Filtering reporting
A new content filter activity report allows you or a self-managed customer to access real-time information on employees’ Internet use via device names, user logged in, IP address, action (if they were blocked, warned or allowed) and total count (how many times they were blocked, warned or allowed).

Additional alerts
Two new alerts have been added to the new 2.1 release: antivirus protection event (triggered if one of Anti-Rootkit, Resident Shield or Identity Protection is disabled) and no scan for X days event.

Simpler deployment options
When you need to add devices, select one of the three following options: email invitation and download; create a redistributable install package or remote deployment.

Dashboard interface improvements
Real-time information about each customer’s network can now be viewed in clearer and more accessible formats, such as nine live alerts in one new widget within the AVG CloudCare Action Center, view alerts and content filtering graphs over the last 7-day period from the dashboard, and improved tool widget that lets you add devices, groups, policies, alerts and users with a single click.

Upgrade of customer-side components
Configure update schedules for AVG CloudCare Agent, AVG AntiVirus, AVG Content Filtering and AVG Remote IT (beta), and select the ‘update company’ option for cross-network actions. You will also be able to push customer-side component upgrades across networks using a device selected as the master agent that reduces the demands on the customer network bandwidth.

24-month payment option
In the new release a third billing option – 24 months – has been added to the existing monthly or yearly billing options.